Author: Paines Plough

Here at Paines Plough we are always looking for ways to demystify the way we go about commissioning, producing and touring new plays in order to provide support for theatre makers at any stage of their careers through a programme called Insights.

As part of Insights we offer a flexible programme of work placements designed to support the study of students on university and drama school courses at MA or BA level with practical work experience of a busy touring theatre company. Please see below for information on how to apply for our Summer/Autumn 2018 programmes.

We’re looking for placements to join Team PP for either the Summer or Autumn:

The Summer placement period will run for 11 weeks from 15 May to 27 July.

The Autumn period will run for 12 weeks from 10 September to 07 December.

You will be in PPHQ 3 days per week, although this can be flexible depending on the placement and your personal study requirements, 10am-6pm with a one-hour break for lunch.

Alongside Yolanda Mercy’s QUARTER LIFE CRISIS this will be the first time a play has been broadcast on 1xtra.

We asked Sabrina what the play being broadcast on 1xtra means to her:

“When 1xtra launched it seemed surreal but brilliant that the music we loved was being taken seriously enough to be given its own BBC radio channel. It marked a shifting moment for what is culturally valued in this country and I feel that WITH A LITTLE BIT OF LUCK being the first drama they air on there, the shift progresses even further towards a place of space making and inclusive, representational cultural documentation and valuing.

I’m so proud the show, and the team that made it, gets to be a part of 1xtra’s celebration of 20 years of garage and especially happy to get a young woman’s perspective being told on such a huge platform.”

Director, Stef O’Driscoll feels the same way:

“I am so hyped for this story and for this celebration of UK Garage to be broadcast on the radio so it can be experienced by more people. It’s so exciting that companies like Paines Plough and BBC 1xtra are supporting new and innovative ways to celebrate an important part of UK culture and storytelling.

When myself and Sabrina embarked on this project our dreams were for our mates and fellow ravers to experience a story that they could relate to. To create an experience where they could celebrate the summers of love spent on the dancefloor and their coming of age to a London UK Garage soundtrack, a celebration of youth. Now we don’t even have to get our mates into the theatre. You don’t need pay £20 entry you can just tune in or listen on playback whist jamming on the bus, in your house, ANYWHERE.”

Since then the show has been on an incredible journey. It toured nationally in Spring 2016 culminating in a sold out run in the Sackler Space at the Roundhouse as part of Last Word Festival. In 2016 the production had people raving outside the National Theatre as it headlined Latitude’s takeover of the River Stage. Last year we were invited back to Last Word Festival to headline the festival. This saw over 1,000 people raving the night away as our cast were joined on stage by DJ Luck and MC Neat themselves to close the night.

Exciting times at PPHQ. We’re on the search for a talented new Production Assistant to come and join Team PP.

We’re looking for someone with excellent administrative skills to support the busy production team, someone who is highly motivated and passionate about new plays and touring.

You’ll be joining Team PP in our Central London office but will regularly find yourself on trains up and down the UK visiting our partner venues and seeing our work on tour.

Up your street? Excellent. We can’t wait to hear from you.

Who are we looking for?

We’re looking for a talented new Production Assistant to come and join Team PP. The Production Assistant works closely with the Production team, administratively supporting the delivery of Paines Plough’s productions and audience development across small-scale, mid-scale, internationally, and Paines Plough’s ACE Strategic Touring funded project Roundabout. Including booking travel and accommodation, co-ordinating castings, arranging and minuting meetings, distributing marketing materials and preparing schedules. The Production Assistant is predominantly office based, though will be required to travel for this post.

The successful candidate will be an enthusiastic member of our dedicated team of ten full-time employees based on Aldwych in Central London. They will have a passion for new plays and touring and experience of working in an administrative role.

If you are unable to submit your application by email, please contact Charlotte Walton on 020 7240 4533.
Shortlisting and Interviews

Shortlisting will take place as soon as possible after the closing date. When shortlisting we are making an assessment of how closely your application meets the selection criteria set out in the person specification.

You will be notified of whether you have been shortlisted or not via email.
Interviews

w/c Monday 19 March 2018

If you are shortlisted, we will contact you by phone to invite you to interview and follow up with an email.

Offers

All offers are made subject to receipt of satisfactory references, proof of identity, address and eligibility to work in the UK.

We hope you find the above helpful and good luck with your application.

Our Joint Artistic Directors James and George today announced Programme 2018.

“We are honoured and excited to present some of the UK’s most exciting new playwrights around the country, on the airwaves and online in Paines Plough’s Programme 2018.

ROUNDABOUT will again tour the UK with three world premieres in partnership with Theatr Clwyd. Simon Longman’s ISLAND TOWN is a play about friendship, cheap cider, and feeling stuck in your hometown. STICKS AND STONES is a hilarious, incisive satire on the modern condition from BAFTA nominated Vinay Patel. Georgia Christou’s HOW TO SPOT AN ALIEN is a rip-roaring space odyssey for adventurous young people and older stargazers. We think Georgia, Simon and Vinay are amongst the most distinctive, observant and entertaining new voices in British theatre and we are thrilled to showcase their work across the UK in our beautiful pop-up Roundabout.

POP MUSIC is a new play from Bruntwood Prize winning writer of YEN, Anna Jordan, co-commissioned with Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Turbo charged by non-stop pop hits from the past 30 years of chart toppers, POP MUSIC is a euphoric, nostalgic, poptastic theatre party for anyone who’s ever been a dick on the dancefloor.

Thanks to a Channel Four Playwright Bursary, London Laureate and former Roundhouse Poetry Slam Champion Zia Ahmed spent the last year on attachment to Paines Plough, during which time he wrote one of the most exciting debut plays we’ve come across in several years. We could not be more excited to be partnering with Tamasha to present the tender and lyrical love story I WANNA BE YOURS which will embark on a ‘Create’ Tour with Rural Arts in April.

We are again partnering with Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and The Gate Theatre to showcase new talent with the world premiere of Isley Lynn’s ALBATROSS, directed by Anna Himali Howard who was Paines Plough Trainee Director in 2016. Both Isley and Anna are major new talents and we are delighted to forge their partnership on a show which will be performed by the graduating actors at RWCMD.

It is our mission to take the best new theatre everywhere, live and digital. Our COME TO WHERE I’M FROM smartphone app will relaunch on the Apple store and Google Play with a 160-strong audio play library from writers across the country – a vivid patchwork quilt of accents, experiences and impressions in your pocket. Wherever you are in the world you can hear writers like Alice Birch, Mike Bartlett, James Graham, Roy Williams, April De Angelis and Lizzie Nunnery telling tales of their home towns.

Whether you’re in a theatre, on a smartphone or listening to your car radio, there is something for everyone, everywhere in Programme 2018.”

Paines Plough presents

ROUNDABOUT

Following another critically acclaimed season in 2017, Roundabout, our award-winning portable in-the-round auditorium, will return for a fifth consecutive year in 2018. The 2018 programme will include World Premieres from Simon Longman, Vinay Patel and Georgia Christou co-produced with Theatr Clwyd and performed in rep, opening at Theatr Clwyd and touring to The Lowry (Salford), Brewery Arts Centre (Kendal), Lighthouse (Poole), Theatre Royal Margate, Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, Appetite (Stoke-on-Trent), Darlington Theatre Town and Luton Culture.

The UK tour of Roundabout is part of a strategic audience development project funded by the Arts Council England Strategic Touring Fund. This is the third year of the project and the tour sees us return to our eight partners.

Roundabout will also host a programme of visiting companies, comedy, music and local community events.

Our 2017 Roundabout premieres from Brad Birch, Elinor Cook and Sarah McDonald-Hughes co-produced with the Orange Tree Theatre and Theatr Clwyd are currently running at the Orange Tree Theatre until 3 March 2018 (more details below).

The World Premieres at Roundabout are:

A Paines Plough and Theatr Clwyd productionISLAND TOWN
by Simon Longman

Kate, Sam and Pete are stuck. The town they live in doesn’t have much going on. But they don’t really care about that when they’ve got cheap cider and their whole lives ahead of them.

And they’re going to break away anyway. Someone’s about to get a car. And all roads go somewhere else. Right?

ISLAND TOWN is a new play about friendship, hope and trying to make an escape.

Simon is a writer from the West Midlands whose play GUNDOG is currently premiering at the Royal Court Theatre. Last year, his play WHITE SKY premiered at the Royal Welsh College before transferring to the Gate Theatre. Simon is currently under commission to the Bush Theatre and Paines Plough. He was a member of the Royal Court Young Writer’s Group in 2014 he won the Channel 4 Playwrights’ Scheme.

“So we’re clear
You know, right?
You know I’m not that kind of person.”

Sometimes we can’t find the right words. Sometimes the wrong word just slips out. Sometimes the right words become the wrong words. And sometimes that ruins everything.

When a misfiring joke turns their life upside down, B sets off on a surreal journey into the night, looking for answers. In an age when language is ever-shifting and technology multiplies every little mistake, can we find a way to understand each other?

Written by BAFTA nominated Vinay Patel, STICKS AND STONES is a side-splitting satire about the search for a sure footing in an uncertain world.

Vinay’s debut play TRUE BRITS premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe 2014 and transferred to the Bush’s RADAR Festival and VAULT Festival. His second, FREE FALL, opened at the Pleasance Islington and was nominated for three Off West End awards. His latest play AN ADVENTURE will premiere at The Bush Theatre in September 2018 and will be directed by Bush Artistic Director, Madani Younis. Vinay’s television debut MURDERED BY MY FATHER was commissioned for BBC3 and won 2 Royal Television Society awards including Best Single Drama as well as being nominated for three BAFTAs including Best Single Drama and the Breakthrough Talent Award for Vinay.

What do you do if you think your aunt is an alien? 12-year-old Jelly and her cousin JonJo have their suspicions.

She won’t let them leave the house. Or ask questions. And she definitely won’t let them in the attic.

Join Jelly and JonJo on their quest to discover the truth in a rip-roaring adventure through space full of friendship, fun and flying saucers.

Contains: one confused alien, two brave kids and a busted spaceship.

For space cadets age 5 and up.

Georgia is a previous member of the Royal Court Young Writers’ Group. YOUS TWO is her first full-length play which was originally shortlisted for the Verity Bargate Award in 2015. She has also been selected as part of Channel 4’s 4Stories scheme and is writing an original single drama which will shoot in 2018. YOUS TWO is currently playing at Hampstead Theatre Downstairs until 24th February 2018.

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A Paines Plough and Birmingham Repertory Theatre co-commissionPOP MUSIC
by Anna Jordan

Direction James Grieve

For anyone that’s ever been a dick on the dance floor.

A wedding. A free bar. A blast from the past.

G and Kayla’s lives are a mess but tonight they’re determined to Have It Large. As their veins course with adrenalin and cheap prosecco we follow them on an epic journey through thirty years of Pop.

Can the DJ save them as they become Dancing Queens, reliving their Teenage Dream, Staying out For The Summer and Spicing Up Their Lives? Pop makes promises it can’t keep, and soon they’ll discover they have more in common than their taste in tunes.

Pop Music is an emotionally contagious rollercoaster. A night at the theatre like no other.

Anna won the 2013 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting for Yen (Royal Court) after having been twice longlisted for her plays MARIANNE and CHICKEN SHOP. YEN has had productions at Manchester Royal Exchange, the Royal Court and MCC New York as well as several international productions. It was also shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize 2015-2016. Other theatre writing includes WE ANCHOR IN HOPE (Royal Court Theatre – Beyond the Court), CHICKEN SHOP (Park Theatre) and FREAK (Theatre503 / Assembly Studios).

James is Joint Artistic Director of Paines Plough.

POP MUSIC will tour with support from Esmée Fairbairn and Paul Hamlyn Foundation.

Ella is from Yorkshire. Haseeb is from London. They order a pizza. House red for Ella. Hot chocolate for Haseeb.

“I think I’m falling in love with you.”

Meet in the middle. Meet the parents. Meet the friends. Meet the aunties. They say opposites attract, but can they stay together?

A tender, funny, lyrical play about finding love and holding onto it with everything you’ve got. I WANNA BE YOURS is the debut play from slam poetry champion Zia Ahmed.

Zia is from North West London. He is a London Laureate, having been shortlisted to be the Young Poet Laureate for London 2015/16. He is a former Roundhouse Poetry Slam champion.

I WANNA BE YOURS was developed with support from the Channel 4 Playwrights’ Scheme.

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A Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama Production in collaboration with Paines PloughALBATROSS
by Isley Lynn

Direction Anna Himali Howard

Tattoos are forever. Almost. And at Noodle Soup Tattoo there are strict rules: No names unless they’re dead. Nothing on the face. Nothing you might get sued for later.

When Jodie, a rough sleeper, asks for a free tattoo from apprentice Kit, her request is well within the guidelines. But Kit is still unsure, because Kit knows only too well that getting inked isn’t the only decision that stays with you for the rest of your life.

Albatross is a small but sweeping story about the past refusing to stay in the past.

Isley’s most recent play, SKIN A CAT, won the Vault Pick Of The Year Award in 2016 and was nominated for four Off West End Awards. She is part of the Bush Theatre’s Emerging Writers Group and a HighTide First Commissions Writer.

Anna was Trainee Director at Paines Plough in 2016. She is a Creative Associate at the Gate Theatre and an alumnus of the REP Foundry artist development scheme. Other directing credits include LIFE IS NO LAUGHING MATTERby Demi Nandhra (Battersea Arts Centre, Normal? Festival) and 20B by Jane English (Birmingham REP, Theatre Royal Stratford East).

Since 2010, Paines Plough’s nationwide project Come To Where I’m From has seen over 160 playwrights from across the pen plays about the places they call home.

Each play is performed for one-night only and then becomes part of the free Come To Where I’m From smartphone app which houses all the mini-plays that have been performed since the project began to create a vivid patchwork quilt of accents, experiences and impressions of the UK.

Thanks to support from The Space, in 2018 Paines Plough will relaunch the app which will be available free to download from the Apple Store and Google Play. The 160-strong audio play library will include a huge range of playwrights, from Olivier Award winners to first timers. Recent additions include: Alice Birch, Mike Bartlett, James Graham, Roy Williams, April De Angelis, Vinay Patel and Lizzie Nunnery.

The app was redeveloped with funding and support from digital commissioning agency The Space and developed by Milk Bar Studios.

The app is available free to download for iOS or Android. Download here.

It’s 2001. Garage is the unavoidable anthem of the UK. Nadia feels like it’s her time to shine.

A hot summer’s night of love promises endless possibilities. Swept up in drinking, dancing, hope, ambition, lust, greed… Nadia will make decisions that will determine the rest of her life.

Rhythmically underscored by your favourite UK Garage bangers. This is theatre you can rave to.

Originally commissioned for a festival audience, With A Little Bit Of Luck premiered to Latitude Festival in 2015. Directed by Stef O’Driscoll with Seroca Davis as Nadia alongside the vocal talents of Martyna Baker, this is theatre you can rave to.

Sabrina’s work includes Fringe First Award-winning CHEF (Underbelly Edinburgh, Soho Theatre), DRY ICE (Bush Theatre), her first play based on her time working in stripclubs, directed by David Schwimmer and for which she was nominated as Best Solo Performer in The Stage Awards and CLEAN (Traverse Theatre), which won a Herald Angel Award and transferred to Off-Broadway in 2015.

Stef is former Associate Director at Paines Plough and and Artistic Director of nabokov

Paines Plough’s 2017 Roundabout premieres from Brad Birch, Elinor Cook and Sarah McDonald-Hughes co-produced with the Orange Tree Theatre and Theatr Clwyd are currently running at the Orange Tree Theatre until 3 March 2018.

They’re trying to save their relationship. They need time and space. An isolated house in the country is the perfect place to work things out.

But you can’t run forever. Especially when you’re being followed.

BLACK MOUNTAIN is a tense psychological thriller about betrayal and forgiveness by winner of the Harold Pinter Commission Brad Birch.

Nominated for the Best Production in the English Language at the Wales Theatre Award 2018.

Brad was awarded the Harold Pinter Commission in 2016. In 2017 THIS MUST BE THE PLACE won Pick of The Year at VAULT Festival. He is currently under commission to the RSC, Teatro Malta, Sherman Theatre and the Royal Court and he is on attachment to the National Theatre.

Lorna and Grace do everything together. They share crisps, cigarettes and crushes. That’s what happens when you’re best friends forever.

But when Lorna gets a place at University, and Grace gets pregnant, they suddenly find themselves in starkly different worlds. Can anything bridge the gap between them?

A tale of friendship, love and rivalry over thirty years from award-winning playwright Elinor Cook.

OUT OF LOVE is a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize 2018.

Elinor was the winner of the George Devine Award 2013 for Most Promising Playwright. She was recently commissioned by the Donmar Warehouse to adapt Henrik Ibsen’s THE LADY FROM THE SEA, which was directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah. Her previous work with Paines Plough includes TEN WEEKS which was a co-production between Paines Plough, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and Gate Theatre in 2016 and LATER in 2007 where it debuted alongside work by Polly Stenham and Alexandra Wood. Elinor also adapted Mac Barnett’s EXTRA YARN which premiered in 2016 at the Orange Tree.

A Paines Plough, Theatr Clwyd and Orange Tree Theatre productionHOW TO BE A KID
By Sarah McDonald-Hughes

Direction James Grieve

Molly cooks. Molly does the dishes. Molly gets her little brother Joe ready for school. Molly is only 12, but she doesn’t feel much like a kid anymore.

Now Molly’s Mum is feeling better, maybe things will get back to normal. Can you help Molly learn how to be a kid again?

Join Molly, Joe and her Nan for a larger than life story of family, friends and fitting in.

Warning: Contains dancing, chocolate cake and an epic car chase.

Winner of the Best Play for Young Audiences at the Writers Guild Awards 2018.

For ages 7+.

Sarah is an actor and writer from Manchester. She recently won a 2018 Writer’s Guild Award for her play HOW TO BE A KID and won the 2017 National Octagon Prize for her play SHERBET, co-written with Curtis Cole. She has previously worked with Paines Plough on Come To Where I’m From.

Back in 2010 when I first joined Paines Plough we started Open Auditions as a direct response to actors telling us they were frustrated at the Catch-22 of needing to be seen to be in something, and needing to be in something to be seen. Our answer was to hold genuinely open calls across the country so everyone had the same chance of securing a slot. We’ve since met 2030 amazing actors we might never have met otherwise. Several of them have gone on to star in PP productions.

Over the past couple of years I’ve been fortunate to spend time with some great groups of Actors’ Guild members in workshops on auditioning for new plays. It’s been fascinating to hear their audition experiences from the other side of the door, and the other side of the table to me.

What becomes quickly and starkly apparent when you do a 360° evaluation of auditions is how often the process is stacked against the actor. For any normal job interview there’s a job description, you’ll get sent some information about the company, you’ll be told who you’ll be meeting, you’ll have time to prepare to present the very best version of yourself.

But for auditions, actors often find themselves sitting in waiting rooms with nothing but some pages of text and with no idea who is on the other side of the door or what they’re looking for. Will someone be reading with me? Should I be off-book? Will I be sitting or standing? Should I try a Scottish accent?

How can you possibly do your best work with so many unknowns?

For my Actors’ Guild workshops I drew up lists of practical tips for auditions, and some of my pet hates. Once I’d given them to the actors, they gave me great auditions. It dawned on me that I’d get much better auditions across the board if I just let actors know what to expect, and what I was looking for. Not exactly rocket science.

So last year we started sending advance emails to every actor who came to audition for us. The email said how much we were looking forward to meeting them, and gave them some basic information about the format of the meeting, the people they would be meeting, and what we’d like to see from them. So I had the chance to let people know they would be sitting around the table, I didn’t expect them to learn the text, I wanted to hear them read in their own accent and they’d be meeting the playwright and producer as well as me.

Armed with some prior knowledge, actors came in more confident and less liable to be thrown. I got to see more of the real them because we’d already established some simple parameters.

From now we promise to always provide actors with the information they need to best prepare for their audition with us, and what to expect from us. We’re making it a formal pledge partly to hold ourselves to account, and partly because we hope it might encourage others to follow suit. We think it will make for better auditions for everyone.

The other thing actors tell us frustrates them is they often only find out about parts when the cast is announced. So from now on, when we announce new productions, we’ll publish breakdowns on our website and we’ll accept and consider CVs from anyone who thinks they’re right for the role.

Let us know what you think of our pledge and what else we could do better. We’re always keen to hear from you and happy to take your feedback on board. Tweet at us on @painesplough or leave a comment below.